In the main, it was undoubtedly the privileges of the Jesuits which made the greater part of Paris and of France hostile to them. Bishops were not to look at them, civic authorities were not to tax them, universities were to be opposed by free classes, and were to respect degrees granted by Jesuits to any whom they thought fit. The hostility was quite natural, and it was fed by indiscretions on the part of the Jesuits. They received a nephew of the Archbishop, against the uncle's will, and they first turned the brain (with their Exercises) of, and then put out of doors, a very learned ornament of the university named Postel. The Archbishop bade them leave Paris, and they remained helpless outside the city, at St. Germain aux Prés, until after the death of Ignatius. He pressed the case at Rome, and doctors of the Sorbonne went there to exchange arguments with Jesuit doctors, but nothing was done until years afterwards.
During the war the Spanish Jesuits had gone from Paris to Louvain and began to teach there. Here again the university scorned and opposed them, and for many years (until they secured the interest of the Archduchess) they made no progress. Ribadeneira, who was in charge, used to break down and retire from the room to weep. In Germany they had a different and more spirited struggle, but they seem to have had little influence in the various conferences and diets at which attempts were still made to reconcile the parties. Favre was at the Diet of Worms in 1540, then at the Ratisbon Conference, where Bobadilla and Le Jay succeeded him. They were restricted to an effort to reform the Catholics themselves, and found it difficult. The letters of these early Jesuits make it quite impossible for any historian to question the appalling corruption of priests, monks, and people in every part of Europe at the time of the Reformation. From Worms Favre wrote to Ignatius that there were not three priests in the city who were not stained by concubinage or crime. At Ratisbon the Catholics threatened to throw Le Jay into the river. "What does it matter to me whether I enter heaven by water or land?" he said. They knew very little German, generally preaching in Latin, and had slight influence for some years.
In time, as they learned German, and confined themselves to the Catholic provinces, their work was more successful. They fastened especially on Cologne, and assailed the Archbishop, a very worldly prelate of the old type, who was annoyed to find these Jesuit wasps buzzing about him, and their house was closed for a time by the authorities. But they had the favour of the Emperor, and the Archbishop was deposed. In 1545 the Council of Trent opened, and Lainez and Salmeron appeared there as the Pope's theologians, together with Peter Canisius (an able German student whom Favre had attracted to the Society) as theologian of the new Archbishop of Cologne. It need only be said of the earlier sittings of the famous Council (in 1545 and 1551) that the Jesuits had little influence, and this they used to oppose any concession to the Protestants and magnify the authority of the Pope. This will be plainer in connection with the later sittings.
The work in Germany was afterwards thwarted by the zeal of the fiery Bobadilla. It had at last come to war with the Protestants, to the satisfaction of the Jesuits, and Bobadilla marched with the troops and was severely wounded at Mühlberg. In 1548, however, Charles published his Interim, or provisional concession of certain Protestant claims (such as the marriage of the clergy) until the Council of the Church should decide the points at issue. It may be recalled that the general Council of Trent was first intended as a common meeting of Protestant and Catholic divines, and the hope of reconciliation was not yet dead. Reconciliation, however, could mean only concession, and the Jesuits were resolutely against concession. Whatever influence they had in Germany, apart from their effort to reform the morality of the Catholics, was reactionary and mischievous in the highest degree. Bobadilla overflowed with wrath at the Interim, and denounced it fiercely by pen and tongue. Charles angrily ordered him to leave the Empire, and he returned to Rome; and it is recorded that Ignatius so warmly resented his "indiscretion" that he refused at first to admit him to the house. Thus did the saint vindicate the majesty of kings, says M. Crétineau-Joly. The outbreak did unquestionably hamper the progress of the Jesuits for a time, but before the death of Ignatius they were firmly established in Vienna, Prague, Cologne, and a few other cities. At Vienna the court demanded that Canisius should accept the office of archbishop, and Ignatius compromised by allowing him to administer the see and refuse its revenue. In the same year a Jesuit was made "Patriarch of Abyssinia." It was just seven years since Ignatius had induced the Pope to decree that no Jesuit should ever accept an ecclesiastical dignity.
Of the foreign missions it is impossible to speak here at any length. In 1540 Francis Xavier had come for his leader's blessing as he started for the Indies. His cassock was worn and patched, and Ignatius took off his own flannel vest and put it on the young priest before dismissing him with the usual: "Go and set the world on fire." It was a different Xavier from the one he had seen, a vain and brilliant teacher, at the University of Paris, and it is well known how he did set the world on fire. He was a handsome, blue-eyed man of thirty-six, and no Portuguese sailor ever fronted the unknown with more courage and heroism than Xavier displayed in his famous travels from India to Japan. After a year's work at Goa, where his first need was to convert the Christians and the Portuguese priests, he went on to Malabar, to the Moluccas, to Malacca, and on to Japan, ending his life, in 1552, in an attempt to reach China. What the result of his mission was it is difficult to estimate soberly. The Jesuit chronicler forgets the confusion of tongues, and makes Xavier leap from land to land, preaching to and converting thousands everywhere, as if they all spoke Portuguese. In Japan he clearly failed, although the Portuguese merchants were greatly anxious for success, and the Japanese, of their own high character and out of respect for the great king (of Portugal), his friend, were extremely polite.
The other foreign missions of the early Jesuits were less irradiated with miracle, or with heroism. Lainez went in the wake of the Spanish troops to Tunis, said mass there, and left no trace behind. Nuñez, the "Patriarch of Abyssinia," went out with two others to take over his diocese, but found a "Patriarch" there already, who made a lively opposition, and the Jesuits had to retire to Goa. Four Jesuits were sent to the Congo. Two died at once, and the other two became so interested in commerce that the king was alarmed. Ignatius recalled and replaced them, but the king expelled the newcomers. In Brazil they made more progress, penetrating the forests and winning the favour of the natives by their medical and other material aid. They tried to save the intended dinners of the cannibals, and, when they failed, sprinkled the poor men with holy water; but the cannibals found that it made them less succulent and forbade the practice. They did useful work in Brazil, and laid the foundation of a great mission.
Such were the labours of the first Jesuits during the generalship of Ignatius, and it remains only to close the career of their able leader. The varied story of success and failure, the showers of glowing testimonials and bitter diatribes, the heroism of some and the frailty of others, kept him alternately elated or depressed to the end. He must have seen that the first fervour could not be maintained, and that opposition became more serious as the Society grew. It had now nearly a thousand members scattered over the world, and a hundred houses and colleges. The figures are misleading, however, as there were only thirty-five professed fathers and only two professed houses; many of the so-called colleges had no pupils and were little more than names. Ignatius had twice attempted to resign his office in the last few years; and there was much to distress him. He had hardly composed the trouble in Portugal, in 1552, when Lainez gave him anxiety. Lainez, who was made Provincial of Italy when Brouet was sent to Paris, complained that the general was robbing his colleges of their best teachers for the sake of Rome. Ignatius dictated to his secretary an angry letter. "He bids me tell you," says the scribe, "to attend to your own charge ... and you need not give him advice about this until he asks it."
In the next year (1553) he had a grave quarrel with Cardinal Caraffa. The Jesuits of Sicily had admitted a youth against his parents' wishes, and Caraffa, to whom the mother appealed, ordered Ignatius to give up the youth. He appealed to the Pope, and got Caraffa's verdict cancelled. When, two years afterwards, Caraffa became Pope Paul IV., Ignatius remembered his momentary triumph with concern, and there were grave faces in the Jesuit house. Paul III. had died in 1549. His successor Julius III. had been, as the previous record shows, very generous to the Jesuits, though funds had fallen very low in Rome, owing to the Reformation, and Ignatius had great work to keep alive the German college he had founded. Julius died in 1555, and it is said by the Jesuit writers that five cardinals voted for Ignatius himself at the next conclave. Marcellus, the next Pope, lived less than a month, and then Caraffa occupied the see. To Caraffa the Spaniards were "barbarians," and the Jesuits were Spaniards. But he postponed the struggle which he was to have with the Society, and received Ignatius courteously.
Work, austerity, and anxiety had at length seriously impaired the strong frame of Ignatius, and he began to prepare for the end. It is marvellous how he lived to see his sixty-fifth year, and continued to control the mighty struggle of his Society against its various enemies. With the opening of 1556, however, he retired to a great extent from the labours of his office, and spent his days chiefly in prayer. He died in the early morning of 31st July 1556, and the struggle for the succession began.